Lab Facilities

The UW-Robotics Lab contains approximately 1600 square feet of laboratory space equipped for conducting robotics experiments. The laboratory is equipped with a variety of equipment, including specialized hardware for medical robotics, manufacturing, and haptics research.

Electromechanical system development is supported in a dedicated prototyping lab equipped with an array of electronic instrumentation and fabrication equipment:

Prototyping Lab

Testing and Experiments Lab

To encourage collaboration, graduate and undergraduate students are collocated in an open-air office environment adjacent ot the prototyping and testing lab space.

Group Meeting Space

Flexible Robotic Catheter Telerobotic Tesbed:

The UW-Robotics Lab contains a multi-axis flexible robotic manipulator testbed designed and constructed for the investigation, development and evaluation of flexible medical robotics devices and their control. The testbed is capable of actuating two flexible robotic devices with up to 5 degrees-of freedom each. The system can be operated in stand-alone mode or as a telerobotic system, utilizing one of three force-reflecting master devices available. The testbed contains the following:

Servo-electronics controller capable of independently controlling 12 axes. The power electronics can interface with DC brush, brushless, or stepper motor drives. The controller I/O can accommodate up to 12 encoder inputs.

Haptics Interface Hardward:

The lab is equipped with an assortment of haptic devices including a modified delta-type 3 degree-of-freedom interface, a custom MR-compatible linear haptic device, and low-cost haptics devices for system development and prototyping

Interleaved Continuum-Rigid Manipulation Testbed / Prototype:

The UW-Robotics Lab has developed a desktop demonstration prototype designed for the purpose of investigating the interleaved actuation concept. The prototype is shown below in a redundant two degree-of-freedom configuration - with two rigid-link joints (pitch and roll) and two flexible segments (roll and articulation)..

Sensing and Instrumentation Suite:

The UW-Robotics Lab contains a range of localization, imaging, and sensing equipment. The equipment includes an electromagnetic location system suitable for use in flexible robotic feedback control , a soft tissue emulator equipped with a 6 degree-of-freedom force-torque sensor , a pair of stereo imaging cameras for emulation of various medical imaging modalities.

Sensing and Localization Equipment

General Robotics Development Hardware, Instrumentation and Prototyping Equipment:

various cameras (Firewire, USB and other CCD cameras with frame grabbers)